"11 Unconventional Approaches to Building Technical Talent that Boost Innovation"
In today's rapidly evolving tech landscape, building technical talent is crucial for driving innovation. This article explores unconventional approaches that leading organizations are using to cultivate their technical workforce and boost creativity. Drawing on insights from industry experts, these strategies offer fresh perspectives on how companies can nurture skills, foster collaboration, and accelerate growth in unexpected ways.
- Immersive Field Training Drives Innovation
- Innovation Sprints Foster Cross-Functional Creativity
- Sustainability Projects Develop Technical Skills
- Stretch Assignments Accelerate Talent Growth
- Peer-Led Training Boosts Technological Adoption
- Diverse Education Fuels Tech Innovation
- Employee-Driven Professional Development Enhances Skills
- AI Research Partnerships Accelerate Innovation
- Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration Sparks Creative Solutions
- Learning Culture Propels Organizational Growth
- External Experts Enhance Team Capabilities
Immersive Field Training Drives Innovation
At Exactus Energy, we've discovered that one of the most effective ways to build technical talent is by rethinking how training and development happen. Rather than relying solely on classroom sessions or traditional onboarding, we've adopted an immersive field-based training model paired with cross-disciplinary collaboration. This unconventional approach has not only accelerated the growth of our team but also strengthened our innovation capabilities.
From the beginning, new engineers and technicians are placed directly into live projects. They don't just shadow senior staff—they actively participate in site assessments, collaborate with drone operators, analyze GPS mapping data, and engage with client service teams. This hands-on exposure ensures that technical training is grounded in real-world challenges, where decisions about design, permitting, and installation intersect. It's a dynamic environment where theory meets practice, and learning becomes both immediate and impactful.
By experiencing the full scope of projects early in their careers, our team members quickly develop a systems-level understanding of solar energy solutions. They don't just learn how to use drone imaging or thermal scans—they understand why these tools matter for efficiency, client confidence, and regulatory compliance. This broader perspective cultivates adaptable professionals who are equipped to problem-solve across multiple dimensions of a project.
What truly sets this approach apart is the culture of collaboration it creates. Because our people are not siloed, knowledge flows freely across disciplines. An engineer might anticipate a permitting challenge thanks to insights from client services, while a drone specialist could suggest a new data application to refine system design. These exchanges drive continuous innovation and ensure that technology isn't just applied, but reimagined to deliver better outcomes.
This unconventional strategy has built a workforce that is agile, forward-thinking, and deeply aligned with our mission. It allows us to scale operations across Canada and the U.S. with confidence, knowing that our teams can innovate under pressure and deliver solutions that meet the highest standards of performance and sustainability.
At Exactus Energy, talent development is not just about building technical skills—it's about nurturing a culture of innovation that drives the renewable energy industry forward.
Innovation Sprints Foster Cross-Functional Creativity
One of the unorthodox approaches we implemented was to cycle engineers into short-term "innovation sprints" from their regular work. Instead of confining them strictly within their product vertical, we allocated two weeks each quarter for cross-functional small teams to experiment with ideas completely outside their daily responsibilities—regardless of whether those ideas had a near-term business rationale.
Here's how it worked out:
- Conscious skill cross-pollination: A backend engineer could team up with a designer and a data scientist on a machine learning proof-of-concept, or a mobile developer could pair up with infrastructure specialists to experiment with test automation tools.
- Constraints on creativity: We imposed strict resource constraints (time + compute credits) on each sprint, which compelled the team to be resourceful and creative.
- Public demo day: Towards the end, teams presented demos to the entire company. Even half-baked projects sparked discussions that influenced the product roadmap.
Innovation impact:
- Engineers rapidly acquired new skills by stepping out of their silos, becoming more versatile.
- A few "throwaway" sprint experiments evolved into top features—for example, an internal tool that began as a single sprint ultimately became the core of our automated testing pipeline.
- The discovery culture reduced burnout because engineers felt a sense of ownership over innovation, not just backlog tickets.
The most significant payoff was transforming curiosity into structured innovation—instead of relying on top-down R&D, we created space for bottom-up ideas, broadening our technical scope and enhancing our ability to quickly respond to new tech trends.
Sustainability Projects Develop Technical Skills
When people think about building technical talent, they usually envision a standard track of training programs and certifications. I took a different approach. I viewed sustainability and recycling as a proving ground for innovation, which became the framework for developing technical skills.
Instead of asking teams to learn from textbooks or simulations, I encouraged them to build and test tools that could support real-world recycling or clean tech applications. This process compelled them to approach problems from multiple angles, including data management, product design, and scaling new platforms. It wasn't about theory; it was about applying technology in ways that could drive measurable change.
The payoff was twofold. On one hand, it built hard technical capabilities faster because people were learning while solving problems. On the other, it gave the team a sense of purpose that permeated everything they did. When you connect tech talent with an initiative that involves recycling, sustainability, and long-term value creation, they start to see innovation less as a buzzword and more as a responsibility. This mindset has been one of the biggest drivers of new ideas and partnerships across the organizations I've worked with.
Stretch Assignments Accelerate Talent Growth
One effective way I build technical talent is by assigning stretch projects to team members before they feel fully ready. For example, I once paired a capable but cautious junior technician with me on a client's firewall migration, a project beyond his usual responsibilities. I provided guidance and oversight, but he led the configuration and documentation.
The results exceeded my expectations. He quickly became capable of managing similar projects independently. This early exposure increased his confidence, allowing our team to take on more advanced work without relying solely on senior engineers. As a result, the company benefited from faster innovation by developing new experts internally.
Peer-Led Training Boosts Technological Adoption
We've found success with our internal champion model, where we identify talented team members to lead small group training sessions tailored to specific departmental needs. This peer-led approach has proven more effective than traditional top-down training methods, particularly when implementing our new project management system. The result has been faster adoption rates across the organization and notably less resistance to technological change. This distributed knowledge-sharing model has created multiple centers of technical excellence within our company, allowing innovation to emerge from all levels of the organization.
Diverse Education Fuels Tech Innovation
One thing that has worked well for us is supporting continuing education for employees, regardless of the subject area. We've had employees taking business classes, creative writing classes, philosophy classes, and so on, and we support these efforts just as much as we support employees seeking technical qualifications or certifications. I am a strong believer in the idea that all types of learning are beneficial for innovation in the tech industry, as they can teach you how to use your mind, critical thinking, and creativity in new ways.
Employee-Driven Professional Development Enhances Skills
I do as much as I can to give my employees choices about their professional growth. We pay for some professional development time each month for each worker, and as long as they report on what they did, what they learned, and how it helped them, what they choose to study is up to them. This has paid huge dividends in terms of helping us learn about new tech tools and identify ones that we can deploy to the whole team.
AI Research Partnerships Accelerate Innovation
We've taken an unconventional approach to building technical talent by establishing formal partnerships with AI research institutions. These collaborations give our team members direct access to cutting-edge research, specialized knowledge, and opportunities to work alongside academic experts on real-world problems. The partnership model has significantly accelerated our innovation capabilities by bringing academic rigor and theoretical expertise directly into our development process, while simultaneously providing our team with continuous exposure to emerging AI concepts and methodologies.
Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration Sparks Creative Solutions
One unconventional approach we've embraced is fostering cross-disciplinary learning by pairing technical staff with colleagues from non-technical departments for collaborative projects. This strategy breaks down silos, encouraging engineers to gain insights into customer needs, marketing strategies, and business challenges. As a result, our technical talent develops a broader perspective, enhancing problem-solving skills and creativity. This fusion of diverse viewpoints has accelerated innovation, leading to more user-centric products and agile solutions. Ultimately, this approach not only sharpens technical expertise but also cultivates empathy and adaptability, driving our company's competitive edge in a rapidly evolving market.
Learning Culture Propels Organizational Growth
One aspect we focus on extensively across the board is learning. We learn together, individually, and truly prioritize creating a learning culture. We even engage in many enjoyable activities such as game nights and testing out code for fun, allowing everyone to get involved in our technology, even if their specific jobs may not be highly technical. This approach has essentially created an environment where everyone organically becomes both a student and a teacher. We all learn from and teach each other, which propels us forward as an organization.
External Experts Enhance Team Capabilities
We implemented a program of inviting external industry specialists to deliver short, focused online sessions on emerging technologies and tools, such as platform specialists presenting the latest Google Ads automation capabilities. This approach has allowed our teams to gain direct knowledge from practitioners at the cutting edge of their respective fields, rather than relying solely on traditional training programs or internal expertise. The regular exposure to outside perspectives has significantly enhanced our team's technical capabilities while introducing fresh thinking that challenges our established methods. Our innovation pipeline has grown more robust as team members apply these new insights to client challenges and internal process improvements.
